Year Two – Establishing Watermarks
Rocky Games Float Parade
Midsummer’s Nightmare, for me anyway. A few people from KGGV humored me and
belatedly agreed to enter a float in the Fourth of July Water Float Parade in
Monte Rio. We built it in my front yard,
not that far from the beach. Jamie Hart was in charge of entries, got us in, and scheduled to be on mic during the parade.
This was a Saturday and I had been up at 4:30 am to start a
6am radio show, then on and off air until one o’clock when Mark came in to do “The Vocal Scene.”
KGGV and Monte Rio Park &
Recreation had an agreed plan to be involved with the festivities that
night, but things broke down and MRRPD cancelled, leaving a sour taste in many
mouths. Our float looked good to us but
paled in comparison to many of the others.
However it did look good in the dark.
By the time of the water parade, I had been up 18 hours,
much of it in the summer heat doing strenuous things. I was near exhaustion and worried I’d have a
heart attack. I was 68 and was leaving the
next day for a few days rest in Carmel, so I thought the worst was over by the
time of the fireworks. However this was
the point at which my heretofore friendly tenant decided to move in her
boyfriend, stop communicating with me, and stop paying the rent.
Then came the low point of the summer.
The glass refilled again, thankfully, due to the efforts of
Pam Tinnin and Beth Hearn, who graciously listened to me ramble about my
personal problems, ad nauseum, until the problems faded into distant memory by
Fall. Thus began my more serious involvement
with the Church.
As the pain of the summer subsided, the pleasure of common
group activity took its place and I grew stronger because of it all (and
lighter).
An aside, I saw Jamie Hart at the
Pink on NYE and she’s turned into a “Babe.” Congrats Jamie.
Owen Edwards – We the people
I run into Owen once a month when Pat Nolan and I are
finishing with our Book Discussion program and Owen is coming in for his, “We the People” show.
It was mostly Owen’s brainchild ideas and
dogged hard work that put together the New Year’s Eve
Party this year at Coffee Bazaar.
Pegasus
Theater
KGGV did a lot for the Pegasus
Theater group. We did promos for
every production and I did a lengthier interview with each of the directors: Jacqueline Wells, Peter Cooper,
Lois Pearlman, and Andrea Van
Dyke.
I recently started putting together the pre and post show
music CDs. And, of course, I’ve started
attending again, after a hiatus of several years.
We promoted Andrea’s Occidental
Cabaret production as well, and a great evening that was. I miss those Cabarets. I also miss those Christmas
Caberets in Monte Rio. These shows
aren’t put on by KGGV, but the local performance artists swing with several
groups, so it was always like a KGGV gathering.
Interviews
at KGGV
I set out as a goal to interview all the KGGV DJs and Hosts,
so that we could use them as promotional filler. Just audio, but I’m still listening to those
gems to get material for this memoir.
Learning about Jazz musicians and Vocalists
You know, one of the universal comments I got when recording
interviews with KGGV hosts and DJs, is how this has been an opportunity for
them to learn even more about their musical specialties, as they do preparation
and research for their shows.
From my personal experience, I can say that I’ve learned a huge
amount about Jazz specifically and music in general over the past year. I’ve learned to enjoy genres that I had
forgotten and buried, but these DJs have brought the music back to life again.
Sister
Glitz & River Ranger
This couple is amazing – both so talented – in so many
ways. I first ran into them through the
library – more specifically through the Friends of the Library and the FOL Reader’s Theater group. Nancy’s show, “Sox
Knocking Rock” was the longest running show in a single time slot, two
hours on prime-time Friday nights. Jim & Nancy were . actors in several plays and Jim went on to do
more serious work at Pegasus.. Jim of
course had one of the most popular shows ever with Stumptown
Radio Roundup. Jim had a cowboy
poetry contest one Saturday morning and asked listeners to call in with their
votes. We had to put on two extra phones
the call volume was so high. Everybody
in town listened to that show. People
wanted more so we scheduled in another hour with “Old
West Radio”, playing old “Lone Ranger” tapes.
Jim and Nancy were also regulars and popular at the River Home Companion shows.
Elena
Welch
I developed a liking for Elena immediately upon meeting her
at the Home Expo in 2006. We shared the studio for an hour. What a classy lady. Unfortunately, I got on her wrong side by
dominating an interview she had scheduled, and then later blowing off another
interview that she wanted me to do.
It’s hard, with scores of big egos, to keep everybody
happy. After a year, everyone has called
me names once or twice. And there are
those who haven’t stopped. Elena is a
star and performed at all the KGGV events, like the Strawberry
Festival and the RHC.
Elena’s show was, Under the Influence.
“Klubhouse” – Voice of Youth
I worked with Suki Aaker on her
program for several months as it initially got going, doing the recording and
playing the program on-air from an edited CD.
We certainly had our differences in 2006/7. I punitively had to pull her weekly program
off the air and make it a monthly after she just blew things off after the very
first week. She was like clockwork ever
since; we put her back on weekly in October.
Rods
at the Rio
Then I went back to the Koret parking lot with two boom
boxes and Giselle to pass out literature during the
2-hour broadcast, which appeared to everyone as a live broadcast.
Note for future years – bring a contribution box to collect
donations.
“Inspiration”
We kept the noon Tuesday time slot open for Pam Tinnin during
the early summer, then I encouraged Pam to record
some of her Vinegar stories. I recorded
eight stories and packaged them with some new age music to round out the hour.
Pam was also a participant in the River
Home Companion series
GCC Church Services
Four times in that second year, I knew Pam Tinnin was talking
directly to me, and addressing my life.
In other words, she got to my soul.
Like doing the “Morning Show,” I
only jumped in because there was an apparent need for someone to do it. In retrospect, the “need” came from Beth and
Randy, and neither one listened that early, but it’s history now. Doing the Church Service was a committed
objective. I thought Megan might do it,
but she was incredibly involved in school.
We have some equipment in the Sanctuary but no one,
including me wanted to tackle that in 2006/7.
Michael Adams and I planned to incorporate
this equipment into our facility remote gear in 2007. So, my digital recorder fit the bill for
Church Services and I’ve recorded and broadcast them since June 2006, without a
miss through 2006/7.
Also did some specials like Sonia Tubridy’s River Choir
performances and the Christmas Eve performance, but they come later.
The
Morning Show
However, I was also happy to be able to turn things over to Sharon Wikoff towards the end of the year, as I wound
down my involvement with Programming activities.
Hayley
Severe - Live from the RRPAC
She scheduled in groups, both classical and non. She was sort of a Kit Mariah with her own
venue. In fact, Kit joined her and
managed the radio side of things for a while.
It was the kind of venture that would take 2-3 years to work out and
develop a regular audience. She didn’t
have the luxury of that sort of period.
Scott
Nickel
Ferd
Sabino – The Cocktail Hour
“Synthesthesia”
Building
a Website
Beth wanted to get David Kenley involved on two levels in the radio
station; a program which he calls “Rivermouth,” and
becoming the Web Site guru.
He’s done both.
“The
Laughing Lady”
The Laughing Lady, aka Sadie Damascus, nee Sarah … .., well you get the point,
this is a woman who likes an alias or two.
I met “Sadie” a few years ago when we both worked as
election clerks. Her husband Grover came
in and brought her a hot dinner – I was impressed. She talked a lot about attending “Burning
Man” and about playing poker.
I met her again, summer of 2006, as a friend of Susy’s. She helped Susy
destroy my back yard garden one morning and has been apologizing ever since.
Sadie has an amazing talent for reading and she is acquiring
a following.
Implementing Streaming
I have been a big proponent of streaming ever since I became
involved in 2006. Streaming would enable
us to be on cable television.
Valerie
Watt
The Church people thought that Valerie and I would make a
good couple. Valerie
and I did go out a few times, but we got along better on the telephone than in
person. It was also hard to see anything
in the future with someone who was planning to permanently move out of the area
in August, no September, no December.
“Rivermouth”
We wanted an “environmental” program from day one. It was nominally Michele
Luna’s for several months, but she was always too busy to start anything.
Beth brought in David Kenley to
do this.
Sonia
Tubridy “River Choir”
What a joy to have met Sonia this
past year. I’m surprised that I hadn’t
run across her before. I recorded her River Choir in rehearsal for their Winter Concert – 25
great choral pieces featuring several soloists including Gael Reed. I also recorded an interview with Sonia as
well as some advertising for the River Choir performances. She and I found a touchstone in Israel, both
of us having spent time there.
“Meandering”
She was very quick to learn and had lots of talent. I talked to her about doing a show of her own
and she jumped at the chance.
Sophie
Weiner
Sophie was friends with David Kornfeld and Kirsten
Coffman. Kirsten turned her radio spot
over to Sophie, as a rite of passage.
Sophie’s mother had been a guest of another show and encouraged her to
do a show. Sophie’s whole family were
musical.
Bob
Linden
A struggling new radio station needs fresh money all the
time and of any amount. I got a call one
day in 2006 from a man calling himself Bob Linden, a
radio personality. You are a radio
personality if you say so and act brazenly enough. I invited him to come up from San Francisco
for our first session. Bob wanted to
rent the studio with an engineer for $75 for a one-hour program broadcast on
Air America (AA), a new liberal, nationwide hookup. I had said great, not knowing what I was
about to get into.
He was a captivating guy – lots of radio war stories. He did his time with small time stations
across the country. He was too-old for a
DJ at 60-ish, so he picked up the banner for vegans and animal rights activists. www.GoVeganRadio.com
(Highlight and Ctrl-Alt then Click to
get there.)
Our local KGGV patter-pace was “river time” – start at
8-ish, end at 9-ish and babble between music cuts. At our first session, Bob scribbled out a
sort of script with four segments, each with differing, but exact lengths,
e.g., interview segment 12:36 (mm:ss); three commercials 2:54. He wanted an under layer of voiceless music
for transitional fade-ins and fade-outs of specific durations. We were pre-recording a show, the final
product to be four sound files that we would upload to New York (NYC). The four files had to total exactly 48:00
minutes. The engineer was me most of the
time, although I did try and “baptize” many new radio wannabes with doing this
session. We did it weekly for a little
over a year. The “engineer” was a
producer (in-charge), screener (making and handling the guest phone call-ins),
recording engineer, and special effects guy (his 5-yr-old grand-daughter’s cute
quip library).
We got to know the PETA lady, Ingrid Newkirk, and were
fascinated to be able to discuss the Michael Vick – dog fighting – pro football
situation with her as it was happening; Bob Barker, elder statesman – TV
Host; Pamela Anderson, behind the
scenes friend of animals and the nicest “star” you’d ever want to meet and have
to deal with; and Dennis Kucinich, a major Vegan, who spoke with us often, even
while he was running a presidential campaign (our secret favorite for 2008).
The “we” above was mostly me, but I hooked in Christine Lowry right away. She was in a death dance with cancer at the
time and investigating all health possibilities slightly off the medically
beaten path. Christine was one of KGGV’s
few true professional radio people, so she was aware of what kept the AA folks
in NYC happy. These were highly
stressful recording sessions, however.
Linden was often late and/or not ready and he was overjoyed to turn over
all the technical aspects to KGGV. The
AA producers in NYC were always complaining that the fades were too short and
the segments too long. The stress was
anathema to Christine’s situation: her pain level was high and she preferred
the slower-paced, medicated state.
I tried Sophie Weiner in the role
– she was one of KGGV’s second wave of interns from El Molino High School. Brilliant and talented HS Senior – she could
run circles around both Bob and I, Randy as well. She did the sessions for a while because Bob
Linden was an entrée to Indie bands that she swooned over. That passed eventually and I tried Sharon Wikoff, but the pace was too frantic. I ran out of candidates who could match the
energy of this dervish. It was a great
learning experience: the segmented wheel of time allocation for a one-hour bit;
the absolute insistence of timings being exact to the second; the value of
voiceless fadeouts (and ins) for making up for the mistakes of others; the
importance of “We’re live!” when you’re hooked in nationwide; and the thrill
(every third or fourth week) when NYC says, “Good one, that’s a wrap (it’s in
the can)”. I still get a respectful
chill when the hour ticks over and I hear, “This, is the BBC – it’s 8:00
am” --
masterful – I know that I can set my watch by their pronouncement.
The
programming Committee
KGGV will implement a few more of the “White Book” ideas in
2007, but this was it for 2006.
We felt a strong need for it because (1) the Programming
Director was over-loaded with tasks – the station had doubled in size since the
May 2006 launch and more people needed to be involved, then (2) we had run out
of time, latitude, timeslots for launching new shows and there were going to be
hurt feelings coming up in 2007 as more “No’s” than “Yes’s” were going to be
passed out to prospective new and changing programs.
The theory is that you put together the three building
blocks of a radio station: two people from the DJ population; two people from
the listener population; and two people from management {Church and fund
raisers in this case}; and as a tie-breaker, you add in the Programming
Director, who is the ultimate boss anyway.
For the first few years, I had to work hard to find people
to devote some of their time to this sort of function. With volunteers, I find that they spread
their time amongst many organizations.
Most people have already allocated all their available free hours.
Slowly, over years, the committee took hold of some of its intended
roles. They desperately wanted to run
the whole station – and the owners squelched this successfully. They never wanted to take on the Program
Director’s role talent scout and developer, professing a Politically Correct
aversion to being judgmental about other people. They had {2010} woken up to content and
format management – catering to one’s audience.
This still did not lead to coherent programming of content {no thought
to patchwork quilt view by the listener}.
This was because the DJs and management {and the lack of a PD for three
years} co-opted the “listener” adherents.
Community
Calendar
Originally I talked Sharon Wikoff into
doing this. We only had 40 minutes on
Tuesday nights. The fast-paced clip of
running through a dozen items along with the timing requirements of half a
dozen phone calls flowing in and holding them to 3-4 minutes each was a bit too
frenetic for Sharon to handle on her own so it turned out to be a tandem
co-hosting until I ran into Valerie Hausmann.
She was a part of the Guerneville
Chamber of Commerce and was the perfect choice for running this sort of
show; it fit in with the rest of her life.
I worked with her for a few months and then backed away. She flew.
Sharon loved radio, though, so she put together a youth
program called, “Radio School for Kids”.
.She had a few signups and the kids completed the course
over a few months and got certificates.
They all appeared on live shows.
Programming
Director’s Choices Year Two
The second year it was Valerie
Hausmann for her Community Calendar Talk Show
and Hayley Severe with her local musician’s show
that provided airing to community musicians.
Parade
of Lights
I interviewed Diane Spain the night before the Parade of
Lights. Not really an interview, we get
together in the KGGV studio and record “The Scoop,” the monthly newsletter put
out by the Guerneville Senior Center.
Diane Spain is the Director of the Center and the Editor & Publisher
of The Scoop. We often discuss our roles
as chief cook & bottle washer.
On this Friday afternoon, Dec 1st, she quivered
with excitement, to the point of happy tears.
The organizers chose her to be the Grand Marshall at the Parade of Lights.
When I saw her the next night, the floats were assembling
for the beginning of the parade, and Diane floated by me. I was running circuits between floats. The GCC float seemed to me, so cold and
bundled up were they, to be a sleigh full of Russians from the Steppes of the Caucasus. Misfortune has The KGGV float always plagued
by. When I saw Diane, a bog alongside
the road had mired the float. Nonetheless,
with happy campers, Suki Aakers and her “kids,” enjoyed themselves being on
stage, prior to their main event later at The River Home
Companion.
An improvement this year was the decorating of the light
posts, a great idea. And for a newcomer
to the event, as I was, the electric magic in the air was palpable, as I
noticed with Diane, in full make-up and costume. I watched the parade from Koala’s, while I
ate some sashimi, trying to achieve balance before moving on to “The River Home
Companion” performance.
River
Home Companion – Year Two
One of the things I learned at IBM school was the concept of
a “Proof of Concept” approach to teaching.
Garrison Keilor’s NPR radio program “A Prairie Home Companion” was our
reference point. Then let creativity take over.
The River Home Companion show was
a proof of concept that our KGGV group of talented people are, in fact, a
little better than Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, in that we can pull together
a much broader and more enjoyable show.
We exceeded each of our three major goals: (1) We did our
“bridge” thing by pulling together a cross section of the River community into
a venue linked to KGGV and the GCC. Many
of my friends from the library and the nether reaches of Monte Rio attended as
part of the 150 people that filled the Odd Fellows Hall.
(2) We kept the ticket price low, but still raised significant money for the
station. (3) We highlighted the breadth
of talent represented by the KGGV and GCC team.
Specific Church stars were: Pam Tinnin dressed in striking
red & black with a story of hers, Kit Mariah singing, Michael
Adams playing & singing and leading a group in a gospel number, Valerie
Watt as queen of the Joke Team, and Jim & Nancy Fullmer who were
sensational in a variety of playing, singing, and comedy bits.
The whole 2-hour and 20 minute show is available on a 2-audio
CD set from KGGV in exchange for a donation to the station.
The Holiday
Dinner
What a truly community event. Hundreds upon hundreds of people – a
significant portion of the town shows up for this, on one side or the other of
the serving tables, oft-times both sides.
I love events like this because they fit my persona, which prefers to
quietly fill in gaps where appears to be a short-term need. Then when I look upon the scene, I recognize
my touches her and there, the trees, the toys, the clean waste baskets and I am
gratified.
NYE
Party
It started with a milestone session by “Midnight Sun.”
We call it Milo’s band because he plays their CD from a few years ago
every Mon-Fri night on his “Touch” program.
I think this was their only performance in 2006, certainly their first
in 2007. The reggae music got many
people dancing and bouncing with the beat.
Janie Roberts followed, accompanied by Gary Digby as she sang some of her Cabaret songs. Berdalee joined
her along the way with a few of her own songs.
John De Salvio continued the
songfest, accompanied by Kira Poluektov on the
piano, as we migrated to a more open mic.
Nancy and Jim Fullmer changed to beat as they switched into their rock
& roll numbers.
Natasha and Gregorio
both entertained the crowd in between musical sets with readings. Lois Pearlman sang
a great comedic number, accompanied by Kira Poluektov. David Kornfeld sat down at the piano and
played a few jazzy medleys.
The staff of Coffee Bazaar were continually passing out
rounds of sweet & savory hors d’ouerves.
They were having a fun time as well.
There was even a toast with sparkling apple cider as we closed the
evening.
Peter’s Posse
I did “date” a lot during 2007/8. It’s hard to categorize relations between the
sexes these days, at least a nominal single category.
Each situation was unique and they all enriched my life,
starting with Irene Wisnewski then Denise Reed, with her breakthrough kiss. There were the ever-present Audrey Ritzer and Carol Carsner. Mid-year brought, … .. Susy
Zelaya. And afterwards outings with
Giselle Antoine, Gretchen Belgrave, and Carmel’s
Cheri;. events with Scorpio Sharon Wikoff and moody
Valerie Watt, finally leading to … ..
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